Afshin Rattansi is a journalist, author of “The Dream of the Decade – the London Novels” and an RT Contributor. Afshin Rattansi began his journalism career on The (London) Guardian in the late 1980s as one of the newspaper’s youngest ever columnists. He went on to work for Britain’s Channel 4, BBC, Al Jazeera Arabic, CNN International and Bloomberg Television and many other media. In the run-up to the Lehman Brothers crash of 2008, he published a collection of four of his novels as “The Dream of the Decade – The London Novels.”
As US pressure increased on Iran, Afshin moved to Tehran to anchor the news on the new satellite TV channel, Press TV which was later banned in Britain. He set up Alternate Reality Productions in London in 2010 making Double Standards, a comedy satire show as well as other TV news commissions. His writing has also appeared in the New Statesman; Counterpunch; The Oldie; Plays and Players; Mitchell Beazley’s Encyclopaedia of 21st Century; The Journal of the British Astronomical Association; Association of Lloyd's Members Journal; Critical Quarterly; Makers of Modern Culture (Routledge, 2007); “Brought To Book” (Penguin, 1994); Flaunt; Attitude. He is a founder member of the Frontline Club in London and he won the Sony Award for outstanding contribution to international media in 2002.

The London HQ has a commanding view of the London skyline –
perhaps the best of any UK news operation - so it’s conceivable
that one can get delusions of grandeur. It may be early days for
the show, but we’ve been noticing a mainstream spin that often
follows the items on our show, days or hours after we broadcast
each episode.

For instance, take our running a story about how the British
Ministry of Defence was involved in a contract for drones which
had been tested on the men, women and children of Gaza (episode 19) . Thanks to War on Want’s Rafeef
Ziadah, viewers could begin to understand that the UK taxpayer is
involved in some arms contracts that were not only inefficient on
a utilitarian basis but that are deeply disquieting on a moral
one too. Within days, the Ministry of Defence was launching a PR
operation for journalists (we weren’t invited) at the UK drone
base at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. Soldiers were selling the
efficient use of drones to UK journalists and the redoubtable
Paul Mason of ITN’s Channel 4 news actually interviewed the UK
Secretary of State for Defence in front of a drone emblazoned
with the logo for “Thales”. Thales’ UK subsidiary is the
very company we featured in episode 19 of the show about drones
and incompetence.

Then there was our interview with former MI5 officer, Annie
Machon in episode 22 which offered viewers a deeply
disturbing look at UK intelligence agencies and their use of
torture and kidnapping nee rendition. Within 24 hours, elder
statesman Ken Clarke who is now Minister without Portfolio, was
at the dispatch box explaining to MPs that there was no evidence
of direct involvement in rendition by the UK security services.
He spoke just as news broke of the guilty verdicts meted out to
two men who murdered British soldier, Lee Rigby. The sub judice
laws in Britain mean that commenting on court cases that are in
progress represents contempt of court punishable by an unlimited
fine or imprisonment for up to two years. That means Britain has
been treated to daily gruesome reports of the appalling acts
carried out by Michael Adebolajo without any context and without
any ability to report that context. When Adebolajo was a suspect,
UK newspapers had printed claims that it was the British security
services that freed Adebolajo from a Kenyan jail and flew him at
the taxpayers’ expense to Britain where he murdered Rigby. In
effect, the murderer of Lee Rigby was an MI5 agent.

During the trial, an impression was created by the media (as well
as the reporting restrictions that exist in the UK) that
Adebolajo was a British Al-Qaeda warrior, free of historical or
foreign policy context. But it may well have been worse than
that. This wasn’t so much a case of UK foreign policy being a
recruitment sergeant for terrorism as we covered in episode 21 of the show with veteran of
Afghanistan, Joe Glenton . This was a case that could well have
involved the SAS and MI6 begging MI5 not to try converting
Adebolajo into “an asset” because they knew exactly how
he had been tortured for being a member of an Al Qaeda-linked
group trying to get into Somalia from Kenya.

Any detergent advertiser will know how the drip-feed news of the
court case created a complete illusion about the tragic
circumstances surrounding the death of Lee Rigby. The public
imagination is bereft of knowledge that it might be possible that
the UK is torturing UK citizens, flying them round the world,
giving them money and then trying them after they kill British
soldiers. Sub judice theoretically only kicks in after a person
has been arrested or charged in criminal proceedings but when
Adebolajo was just a suspect – albeit one videoed holding the
murder weapon – the British press was quoting Kenyan immigration
sources, saying that British High Commission officials were the
ones who intervened to help secure the release of Adebolajo.

What we’d like on Going Underground, of course, is to speak to
the special forces soldiers that were reportedly furious about
the actions of MI5. The home secret service had only just
installed its new Director-General, Andrew Parker, when Lee Rigby
was murdered. Parker had taken over from Sir Jonathan Evans,
under whose watch Rigby’s murderer was presumably recruited. We’d
also love to speak to Andrew Parker but not even the UK
parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee could summon him. That
became clear when Home Secretary Theresa May said on Monday that
it wasn’t the job of the Home Affairs Committee to talk to people
like him. One of the members on that committee is civil liberties
campaigner Julian Huppert who is MP for Cambridge. He’s on the
show on Saturday (Episode 23) talking about why he wanted the
head of MI5 to come and give evidence in their ongoing inquiry
into counter-terrorism operations. One specific operation they
are concerned with is why the head of Britain’s civil service
went into the offices of a national newspaper with some heavies.
The editor than had to watch while some of his computer equipment
was destroyed – all because the newspaper had published some
articles. The journalism in question was of course all to do with
the Edward Snowden revelations which according to former Defence
Secretary Liam Fox hugely damaged British national security. On
Episode 20, Fox explained why he had written
to the Department of Public Prosecutions about the conduct of The
Guardian newspaper which he believes contravened the Terrorism
Act (2000). A Scotland Yard investigation into The Guardian
continues.

One thing’s for sure, though. When punk band The Damned released
“Smash It Up,” they weren’t talking about computers
belonging to a national newspaper being smashed up. And that
completely gratuitous segue is to signal to you, dear audience,
that we have none other than Rat Scabies from The Damned – the
first band to release a punk single – on the show on Saturday.
His views on X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent are none too
complimentary. But he does have some advice for any budding
recording artists our there about what to do when your new label
tells you not to engage with politics or austerity on your first
single.

Afshin Rattansi is host of RT’s new UK Political series,
Going Underground broadcast every Monday, Wednesday
and Saturday - only in Britain.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.